The value of Mr Fukusawa’s work was enhanced by the circumstance that it was perseveringly carried on in spite of opposition and almost contumely, and in days when the utility of a sound commercial education could not be discerned, for the samurai abhorred of all things the contamination of trade, and those who devoted themselves to the acquisition of other than classical knowledge, equally with those who might seek to impart it, were openly scoffed at. It has been pointed out with much force by one of his contemporaries that long before the Jo-I and Kai-koku parties in the State had adjusted their differences concerning the retention or abandonment of a policy of isolation, Mr Fukusawa was enjoining on his pupils the benefits to be derived from a study of Smith’s “Wealth of Nations,” and that while feudalism was still in the ascendant his students were deep in the mysteries of the standard work on “Representative Government” by John Stuart Mill. The greater the opposition that he encountered, the more determined was Mr Fukusawa to fulfil the task which he had set himself, and he no doubt imbibed during his stay in America not a few ideas relative to the spread of education that were of use to him later in life. Mr Fukusawa seemed to be marked out for the post of Minister of Education whenever that post might fall vacant, but he consistently declined to take office, preferring to carry on his school rather than to aim at rank and station. And when it is remembered that he was mentor to half the statesmen who have risen to power in the Meiji era, the extraordinary influence that he exerted indirectly on the affairs of his country will readily be comprehended. Mr Fukusawa died in 1900, and his second son Sutejiro, who—together with his elder brother, Mr Fukuzawa Ichitaro,—went to America in 1883, to prosecute his studies, and entered at Yale University, remaining there until 1890, now edits the _Jiji Shimpo_ in Tokio, and married the daughter of Viscount Hayashi, the Japanese Ambassador to Great Britain. XVII MARQUIS KIDO KOIN